Van der Horst Frank C. P. - John Bowlby - From Psychoanalysis to Ethology

This edition first published 2011
2011 Frank C. P. van der Horst

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Van der Horst, Frank C.P.

John Bowlby : from psychoanalysis to ethology : unravelling the roots of attachment theory / Frank C.P. van der Horst.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-68364-4 (cloth)

1. Bowlby, John. 2. Attachment behavior. 3. Attachment behavior in children. 4. Psychoanalysis. 5. Human behavior. I. Title.

BF575.A86V36 2011

155.418dc22

2010046385

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDF 9781119993117; Wiley Online Library 9781119993100

To Francisca

About the Author

Frank C.P. van der Horst was born on August 5, 1977 in Delft, the Netherlands. He obtained a Masters in History and one in Education and Child Studies from Leiden University and was offered the chance to do research on a crossroads of both disciplines. Under the supervision of Professors Van der Veer and Van IJzendoorn both notable experts in the field he expanded on the historical and theoretical work at the Centre for Child and Family Studies at Leiden University and focused on the cross-fertilization of ethology and attachment theory, resulting in his Ph.D. thesis John Bowlby and ethology: A study of cross-fertilization. During this project, he discovered many hitherto unknown data in private and public archives and used oral histories to relate the historical development of John Bowlbys ideas.

Currently, Van der Horst works as a psychologist at De Waag Rotterdam, an outpatient clinic for forensic psychiatry, and as a researcher at the Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University. His research aims at describing the history of ideas in the behavioral sciences, such as the ideas and work of John Bowlby, Ren Spitz, William Goldfarb, Jean Piaget, and Harry Harlow. His aim is also to further unravel the roots of attachment theory in, for example, the work of James Robertson and that of developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth. These studies are necessary to complete our picture of the historical embeddedness of theoretical innovations in developmental psychology.

Foreword

by Professor Jerome Kagan

A question guaranteed to pique the interest of scientists and non-scientists asks, for each phenomenon, to what degree was this event constrained by its past and, therefore, potentially predictable? That is why millions of viewers will watch documentaries describing the origin of our universe or the evolution of life forms. The imprint of the past on the present assumes a special significance when we ask why some adults believe they are less happy than their friends. Economists and political scientists who gather questionnaire evidence from adults in varied societies report that extreme poverty and serious illness are a major cause of unhappiness. Philosophers, on the other hand, argue that a failure to honor ones ethical standards is the enemy of continued serenity or joy. A reasonable proportion of biologists and psychologists share the belief held by Alice James, the younger sister of William and Henry James, that a sanguine or melancholic mood is due, in part, to ones genes.

The strong claim that the experiences of early childhood make a major contribution to adult moods, and by inference quality of adaptation, is relatively recent in the history of ideas. This notion began to gain credence in Europe during the eighteenth century after the size of the middle class had grown and many mothers could stay at home rather than work in the field or at a loom. As a result, society needed to find a critical function for these women and influential commentators nominated a mothers love for her child as the elixir necessary for healthy psychological development. A large proportion of contemporary psychiatrists and psychologists are certain that the quality of the infants emotional relationship with its primary caretaker, preferably the biological mother, affected the probability that the adult will or will not be vulnerable to frequent bouts of anxiety or depression.

John Bowlby tweaked consensual opinion when he replaced the infants need for the sensory pleasures accompanying feeding, which Freud had nominated as formative, with the more psychological need for a feeling of security that a loving mother provides. Bowlbys childhood may have prepared him for this hypothesis. As the fourth child in an upper-middle-class, English family whose care was entrusted to nursemaids who tended the young Bowlby and his siblings in rooms on the top floor of the familys spacious home, Bowlby recalled seeing his mother for about an hour a day and his father once a week. In addition, his favorite nurse left the household when Bowlby was only four years old. Bowlby spent a long, productive career trying to prove that the quality of the interaction between the mother and infant constrained the childs future in a serious way.

Frank van der Horsts beautifully crafted, even-handed history of the 50-year interval between Bowlbys intuition that infants deprived of maternal love were at risk for an unhappy life and Mary Ainsworths 1978 volume, Patterns of Attachment, provides readers with a trail of facts so rich in detail each can decide on the validity of Bowlbys bold idea.

The Bowlby narrative can be divided into four relatively discrete stages. The first centers around Bowlbys brief employment at one of the many progressive schools established in the 1920s as an educational application of Freuds ideas. Most of the children attending this school were emotionally disturbed and some had experienced early separation from parents or obvious neglect. Bowlby regarded these facts as supporting the writings of Ian Suttie, with whom Bowlby was familiar, arguing that a mothers love for the child was as vital for its psychological development as good nutrition was for its physical growth.